Thursday, 30 January 2020

'Metal Detecting' caused by low levels of education?


Good education is a foundation for a better future
The results of a study carried out at the University of Leicester suggested that Brexit has been caused by low levels of education and that even a slight increase in higher education in the UK could have kept Britain in the EU (Jon Stone, 'Brexit caused by low levels of education, study finds', Independent 7 August 2017). Access to higher education was the 'predominant factor' in how people voted in the referendum.

So, I will continue to oppose the current trend to dumb-down archaeology ("buy a metal detector an'experience the past") because dumbdown is damaging to the critical faculties. British dumbdown is nationally damaging. We need to aspire to do encourage people to do better, try harder, not pander to the lowest denominator. That goes not just for our discipline of course but the interactions of academics with society as a whole.



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2 comments:

  1. Brian Mattick31 January 2020 at 00:48

    We have a representative democracy for an excellent and inescapable reason. Because the alternative is to entrust the fate of the country directly to the people of Sunderland. How did that go?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian Mattick31 January 2020 at 01:03

    And that, of course, is why other countries entrust the fate of their archaeology to archaeologists.

    ReplyDelete